Commentary - Matthew 19:1-12

Bird's-eye view

In this passage, Jesus moves His ministry into Judea, the heartland of the Jewish establishment, and is immediately confronted by the Pharisees on the contentious issue of divorce. Their question is a trap, designed to force Jesus into taking a side in a popular rabbinic debate and thereby alienate a portion of the populace. But as always, Jesus refuses to play their game. He bypasses their casuistry and takes them back to the beginning, to God's creation ordinance for marriage. He establishes the divine, creational foundation of marriage as a permanent, one-flesh union between one man and one woman. When pressed about Moses' concession regarding divorce, Jesus identifies it for what it was: a temporary provision due to the hardness of their hearts, not a reflection of God's original design. He then restores the original standard, defining remarriage after an illegitimate divorce as adultery. This high standard shocks even His own disciples, who wonder if it might be better not to marry at all. Jesus concludes by acknowledging that a life of celibacy is a special gift from God, given to some for the sake of the kingdom, but it is not the norm for all.

The entire exchange is a masterful display of Jesus' authority. He is not merely another rabbi offering an opinion; He is the Creator and Lawgiver Himself, explaining the meaning of His own institution. He cuts through centuries of legalistic wrangling to restore the profound reality of marriage as a covenantal picture of His own relationship with His people, a bond that God Himself has forged and that man has no authority to break.

Outline

Context In Matthew

This encounter in Matthew 19 occurs as Jesus is making His final journey toward Jerusalem and the cross. He has left Galilee for the last time and is now in the territory of Herod Antipas, the very ruler who had beheaded John the Baptist over a conflict related to an illicit marriage. The topic of marriage and divorce was therefore politically charged and dangerous. This section follows Jesus' teachings on humility, forgiveness, and church discipline in chapter 18. The transition from the internal life of the church to a public confrontation on the foundational institution of society is significant. A church that understands forgiveness and discipline internally is equipped to speak authoritatively to the world about God's standards. This teaching on marriage sets the stage for the final confrontations in Jerusalem, demonstrating that Jesus' authority extends over every sphere of life, starting with the family. His high view of marriage is a direct challenge to the moral laxity of the age and a foundational element of the kingdom He has come to establish.

Key Issues

Back to the Beginning

The Pharisees come to Jesus with what they believe is a clever theological problem, a knotty point of rabbinic debate. The school of Hillel permitted divorce for "any reason at all," while the school of Shammai was much stricter, permitting it only for serious sexual immorality. They want Jesus to pick a side. But Jesus refuses to get entangled in their traditions and debates. His response is to sweep the entire board clean and say, in effect, "You are asking the wrong question, starting in the wrong place."

He takes them back behind Moses, behind the fall, behind the debates of the rabbis, all the way back to Genesis 1 and 2. "Have you not read...?" This is a rebuke. He is speaking to the scriptural experts, and He asks them if they have even read the first page. His argument is not from tradition or popular opinion, but from the bedrock of God's created order. Marriage is not a human contract that can be renegotiated or dissolved at will. It is a divine institution, woven into the fabric of creation by God Himself. Before any discussion of divorce is possible, the nature of marriage must be established. And its nature is permanence.

Verse by Verse Commentary

1-2 Now it happened that when Jesus had finished these words, He departed from Galilee and came into the region of Judea beyond the Jordan; and large crowds followed Him, and He healed them there.

Matthew marks a significant geographical and thematic shift. Jesus leaves Galilee, the primary location of His ministry, and begins His final approach to Jerusalem. He is entering enemy territory, the domain of the Judean leadership. But His popularity has not waned; the crowds still follow Him, and His compassion is still evident in His healing ministry. This combination of popular support and compassionate power is precisely what makes Him such a threat to the establishment.

3 And some Pharisees came to Jesus, testing Him and saying, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all?”

The Pharisees waste no time. Their motive is not sincere inquiry but to test Him, to trap Him. The question was a hot-button issue. If He sided with the stricter school of Shammai, He would appear harsh and uncompassionate to the common people who followed the more lenient Hillel school. If He sided with Hillel, He could be accused of undermining the law of Moses. The phrase "for any reason at all" represents the lenient, and popular, position. They are trying to impale Him on the horns of a public dilemma.

4-5 And He answered and said, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning MADE THEM MALE AND FEMALE, and said, ‘FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH’?

Jesus' answer is a direct appeal to the creation account in Genesis. He ignores their rabbinic framework entirely. First, He points to Genesis 1:27: God made them male and female. The sexual distinction is not a social construct; it is a foundational, biological, and theological reality established by God at the beginning. This complementarity is essential to marriage. Second, He quotes Genesis 2:24, which describes the dynamic of marriage. A man leaves his primary family unit to form a new one. He is "joined" or "glued" to his wife. This union results in a new entity: the two become "one flesh." This is not merely a poetic description of intimacy; it is an ontological reality. They are a new unit, bound together by a covenantal act that God Himself witnesses and seals.

6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.”

Jesus draws the radical conclusion from the Genesis texts. The one-flesh union is so real that it supersedes their former individual identities. "They are no longer two." Then comes the thunderous command that forms the bedrock of the Christian doctrine of marriage. The joining is God's work. Man and woman make the vows, but God forges the bond. And because it is a divine joining, no human being, not a husband, not a wife, not a lawyer, not a judge, has the authority to tear it apart. To attempt to do so is to usurp the authority of God.

7 They said to Him, “Why then did Moses command to GIVE HER A CERTIFICATE OF DIVORCE AND SEND her AWAY?”

The Pharisees think they have Him. They shift their ground from their traditions to the law of Moses itself, citing Deuteronomy 24:1. If marriage is so permanent, why did Moses command a process for divorce? They misrepresent the text slightly; Moses did not command divorce, he regulated it. But their point is to pit Jesus against the authority of Moses.

8 He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.

Jesus masterfully explains the purpose of the Mosaic law. It was not a command but a concession. It was a legal provision made necessary by the sinfulness of the human heart. In a fallen world, men with hard, unrepentant, and cruel hearts would simply abandon their wives, leaving them destitute and shamed. The certificate of divorce was a form of protection for the woman, a legal recognition of her status that allowed her to remarry without being accused of adultery. It was a judicial curb on a greater evil. But, Jesus insists, this was a concession to sin, not the declaration of God's ideal. God's ideal is found "from the beginning." The law given in the wilderness was for a stiff-necked people; the law of the kingdom restores the creational standard.

9 And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”

Here Jesus speaks with His own authority: "And I say to you." He is not just interpreting the law; He is the Lawgiver. He lays down the law for His kingdom. To divorce a spouse for any reason other than "sexual immorality" (porneia) and then marry someone else is to commit adultery. The word porneia is a broad term for sexual sin. It includes adultery, but also fornication, homosexuality, and other forms of sexual deviancy. When the one-flesh union has been violated and broken by such a sin, the covenant has been breached. In such a case, divorce is permissible as a recognition of the breach that has already occurred. But for any lesser cause, the original bond remains intact in God's eyes, and any subsequent "marriage" is, in fact, an adulterous relationship.

10 The disciples said to Him, “If the relationship of the man with his wife is like this, it is better not to marry.”

The disciples are stunned. Their reaction shows just how far the culture had drifted from God's original design. They had breathed the air of a throwaway marriage culture for so long that Jesus' standard seems impossibly high. If you cannot get out of it easily, if it is this permanent and binding, maybe it is better to avoid it altogether. Their response is a pragmatic, cost-benefit analysis, and it reveals that their hearts were not so different from those of the Pharisees.

11-12 But He said to them, “Not all men can accept this statement, but only those to whom it has been given. For there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother’s womb; and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men; and there are also eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to accept this, let him accept it.”

Jesus acknowledges the difficulty of what He has said. He agrees with the disciples' sentiment in a qualified way: for some, it is indeed better not to marry. But this capacity for celibacy is not a matter of personal preference or cynical calculation. It is a divine gift. He describes three types of "eunuchs," or those who do not engage in marriage. Some are born without the ability or desire. Some are made that way by others, through castration. But there is a third, noble category: those who voluntarily forgo marriage for the sake of advancing the kingdom. Like the apostle Paul, they have been given the gift of celibacy so they can serve Christ with undivided attention. This is a high and honorable calling. But it is a specific gift, not the general rule. For most, the path of sanctification is through the covenant of marriage, with all its demands and difficulties. Jesus' final statement, "He who is able to accept this, let him accept it," is a call to self-examination. Each person must understand how God has gifted them and live faithfully within that calling.

Application

This passage is a direct assault on the modern world's trivialization of marriage. We live in a culture that views marriage as a temporary contract based on romantic feelings, a contract that can be dissolved the moment it ceases to be personally fulfilling. Jesus calls us back to the beginning. Marriage is a covenant, a sacred and permanent bond sealed by God Himself. It is a living drama that tells the world the truth about Christ's unbreakable love for His church.

Therefore, we must treat marriage with the weight and seriousness it deserves. For those considering marriage, this means understanding the gravity of the vows you are making. You are not signing a lease; you are entering a covenant before God that is meant to last until death. For those who are married, this means fighting for your marriage. It means that when hardness of heart sets in, as it does for all of us, the solution is not to seek the exit but to seek the cross. It is to repent of our sin, to extend grace and forgiveness, and to rely on the Holy Spirit to soften our hearts and enable us to love as Christ has loved us. The world sees divorce as a solution to a problem; the gospel sees repentance and forgiveness as the solution.

And for those who are single, this passage offers great dignity. Singleness is not a second-class status. For those who have the gift of celibacy, it is a strategic calling for the sake of the kingdom. For those who desire marriage but are not yet married, it is a time to pursue holiness and serve God with faithfulness. Whether married or single, our ultimate identity is not found in our marital status, but in our union with Christ, the Bridegroom who laid down His life for His bride, the church.